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Defining Organic Gardening


Recent years have seen a trend toward organic gardening and organically grown food. Organic is not limited to fruits and vegetables, it can also refer to meat. Organic is described as growing naturally without chemicals. Many studies have suggested that foods that are grown with chemicals might cause serious harm to our health.

Those who grow organic gardens will not use any type of synthetic or chemical fertilizer. They also will not use any type of pesticide unless it is homemade from natural ingredients that will not cause harm to the body. The health issues are the biggest advantage to organic gardening.

Before you can be successful at organic gardening, you must first learn how to treat your soil. Since chemical fertilizers are not allowed, the soil needs to have added nutrients before it can produce a bountiful crop. Limestone is a good source of calcium and magnesium which is needed by most of your plants. You can also substitute wood ashes instead of limestone and still get the same nutrients.

Organic Gardening Tips

If you think about it, the early settlers and the Indians did not have the fertilizers and pesticides which are available on the market today. They had to grow their food the natural way and they usually had abundant crops. We can learn a lesson from these early settlers about the way they grew their food.

Organic gardening requires a little creativity but is not all that difficult to do. Instead of throwing all of that left over food out, start a compost pile with it instead. Add to this all of the leaves that you rake out of your yard in the fall. By the time spring arrives you should have a pretty good compost pile started. Spread this over your garden area to help add nutrients to the soil. This also serves to help hold in moisture which is needed on those hot summer days.

Sometimes the vegetables in the garden develop a fungus which can destroy your healthy plants if it is not brought under control. A good solution to your fungus problem may be as close as your fridge. For some reason milk seems to do the trick. Mix milk with water and spray on your infected plants. Usually the mixture needs to be more water than milk such as one part milk and eight parts water. If you are going to use a sprayer it will probably be best to use lowfat milk since whole milk could stop up the sprayer. If you dont like to think about spraying perfectly good milk on your plants, buy a box of powdered milk. It works just as well.

Organic gardening can be enjoyable and you will probably find that the foods taste better than you have tasted in years. You will also reap the health benefits along with your harvest.